Youth, Media, Mental Health, Bullying, Body Image, Self Esteem

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For my Storify article I chose the topic cyberbullying because I think that it is an extremely important issue that deserves as much attention as possible. Cyberbullying victimizes teens everywhere and causes issues surrounding their development, mental health, and well-being. The purpose of my storify article is to provide a good background knowledge on what cyberbullying is, how it works, and the resources available for parents and teens to help prevent it.

This week we were asked the question if the emergence of new opportunities encourage us to participate more directly in citizen journalism and/or social activism and the majority of us have agreed that indeed it does. @cromero2013 commented that “citizen journalism and the internet has really increased the consumption of news by young people”, and I completely agree with this statement. Today the majority of us are all engaged on social media sites and by news companies tweeting or sharing posts on Facebook, it allows all age groups to consume the news. @zaduban’s comment “I will tweet once in a while if I have a strong opinion on something and have a good amount of knowledge on the topic” and @colecrerar90 similarly commented that “the emergence of all these various avenues of social media and journalism allow for everyone to become more and more engaged in the news all over the world”. The emergence of these new opportunities definitely allows us to participate directly in citizen journalism or social activism, and it is no surprise to me that everyone who has commented on my blog has stated that these ways have encouraged them to engage in different news opportunities. Everyone has also commented that they did not think they were involved in social activism but after I brought up the point that I have signed online petitions about particular topics ive felt needed attention everyone realized that they were also involved in more social activism then they had thought. Overall, throughout reading the comments on my blog, it seems the final consensus is that these new emerging opportunities definitely keep us all engaged one way or another, and to me this is a great thing.

Media coverage is available on mostly all social networking platforms now a days, and it is hard not to be engaged in the news and what is happening in todays world. My Facebook page has news stories in my newsfeed, and my twitter has breaking news tweets from CNN, my local newspaper, as well as a million other followers who tweet news they find relevant as well. I have to admit that the emergence of these new opportunities for sharing journalism have encouraged me to consume more journalism and even mildly participate in it more directly as well. There has been many times where I have shared a particular news story on my Facebook that I find interesting or I feel strongly about, and I have also signed online petitions which have allowed me to directly participate in social activism.

In Hermida’s article Tweets and Truth; he discusses this point and how journalism through social media is beginning to include individuals who are not journalists. A quote I find interesting in Hermida’s article is “twitter has also been adopted as a mechanism for user-generated content, tapped by news organizations for gathering eye witness reports as events unfold in real time” (2012, p. 663). I find that this quote supports the idea that consumers who are not journalists are able to freely become one and twitter allows this to occur by allowing everyone to be involved. Dalgren’s article Reinventing participation: civic agency and the web environment also support this notion and social media allows for “mutual support, organizing, mobilizing or solidifying identities” (2012, p 27). Dalgren’s article is important and outlines the importance of citizens all being able to be involved through social media and engage in journalism. Overall I think that the emergence of all these various avenues of social media and journalism allow for people including myself to become more and more engaged and involved in which I think benefits journalists, news organizations, and just as importantly us consumers, because it allows information to be gathered from all angles.

I chose this article, and the specific quote within the article to show the way that mass media exposure can strongly affect and influence adolescent development. The quote I chose to me rounds up the whole article, and supports my argument of how strongly the media can negatively impact adolescent youth.

Everyone’s comments seem to come to the general consensus that music companies should find better ways to prevent piracy, and embrace the new world of music sharing. In @nzaduban’s blog she discusses that while piracy is a huge issue for music producers, and pirating music goes against copyright laws, it would still be impossible to completely eliminate the problem of online music sharing. I completely agree with this, when one music sharing website goes down, another one is created, for example napster and limewire. @cromero2013’s blog brought up a good point that it is wrong for big music companies to slap lawsuits against people who are downloading music from the internet, but rather they should be focusing on the people who are creating the music sharing software, and by doing this makes record companies come across as an enemy to the consumer. I think this brings up a good point, and because CDs are becoming obsolete, big music companies should find new and innovative methods to get consumers to purchase their music via the Internet, rather then slapping big lawsuits on people who share and download music. Another good point brought up in @melaniemonroe’s blog was the reasons young people engage in illegal downloading of music, which is it is often to expensive for young people to afford the music they want and that the ability to share music information should not be restricted to the consumer.
Throughout reading the comments on my blog, everyone seems to agree that big music companies need to be conscientious of the way the consumers are changing the music industry and rather then fight against it, they should find ways to get us to buy their music online. Also, many blogs seemed to bring up the same point that if we teach children at a young age the harms of pirating music online, and the importance of supporting musicians and buying music, then this would help eliminate piracy if it is taught at a young age.

Through my years of growing up, I have witnessed as well as have been apart of what Condry (2004) calls a “culture of piracy.” I remember saving up every penny I had to buy my favorite bands album that was being released on numerous occasions, and I also remember a very distinct shift from buying CDs to learning from friends that you can easily download music for free from the Internet. I believe CDs and CD stores are slowly becoming obsolete, and soon enough they are going to be categorized with record players and tape cassettes. With that being said I think that Napster has almost helped the music industry in opening their eyes to the new direction the music world is going in, and rather then fighting online sharing and piracy with lawsuits, recording industries should embrace this new way of sharing music and come up with ways to work with internet sharing rather then against it.

In the Condry (2004) article Cultures of music piracy, I think he demonstrates two very strong points which shows that fighting the new culture of music piracy with lawsuits, laws and legislations may have proved a point for a brief moment in time, but people continue and will continue to download music, which in all actuality does not completely diminish big record companies like they state, “lawsuits convinced around 6 million former downloaders to stop, but also estimated that 5 million new users started up in the same period” (p. 350). Condry (2004) also strongly backs up his argument by discussing opinions from students taken from surveys on their opinion of piracy and ethics. It seems that in turn students surveyed seemed to question the industries ethics and stealing giving various reasons such as deceptive marketing, uncertainty about where the money is going, and one that stood out strongly to me is “downloaded music is free promotion for record companies” (p.356).

I think that these two articles brought up very good points and made me look differently at how bad downloading music actually is for record companies. In McCourt and Burkart’s (2003) article When creators, corporations and consumers collide: Napster and the development of on-line music distribution, they discuss how the Internet is a powerful marketing tool for recording companies, and “gives them sizeable cross-promotional and cross-industrial channels for marketing products on-lines as well as off-line” (p.343). With that being said my suggestion to the recording industry would be to try and find a way to embrace online music sharing, and find ways to utilize various ways of Internet sharing that agrees with the producer as well as the consumer for.

I attempted to edit (lol) and have created this video to share my topic with everyone and provide some knowledge on the subject. This video involves real clips of people sharing their stories from being bullied as well as information on Cyberbullying. Enjoy 🙂